The second garden on our tour was hosted by Ann. Here, Ann welcomes us into her garden.
A beautiful cut-leaf Japanese maple tree hides Ann's pond from view until we continue on the path past the tree. The paving stones that mark the path are a clever way to ensure that garden visitors walk around the Japanese maple instead of accidentally damaging the tree by walking too close to it. Pathways are a good visual cue as to where it is safe for garden visitors to walk.
A gargoyle is almost hidden by the foliage of the Japanese maple tree. It's fun to discover garden art in unexpected places.
Ann's pond allows us to enjoy the sound of falling water as we walk through her garden.
The garden surrounding Ann's pond features hostas and groundcovers in addition to the Japanese maple tree.
One of Ann's many hostas is in full bloom. What a great display it put on for our tour! Part of the fun of any garden is the artwork that the gardener chooses. Art in the garden adds interesting accents to the beautiful plantings. Here, a metal sun shines down on an otherwise shady area.
As Marie admires Ann's hostas, Ann invites us to sit under the grape arbor and have some iced tea. Thank you Ann! We enjoyed that!
Ann has positioned a Mandevilla plant at the base of two of the grape arbor's posts. The Mandevilla will climb up the posts over the course of the growing season. Unfortunately, Mandevilla is not winter hardy here. But what a beauiful plant!
On the other side of Ann's grape arbor is this patch of rhubarb. The giant leaves are impressive!
Between Ann's arbor and her house is this inviting garden.
Ann doesn't let a gardening opportunity to get past her. Here, she uses climbing vines to climb up to her deck. The plant with the purple flowers is Clematis. The plant with the red, trumpet shaped flowers is trumpet vine.
The plant with the purple flower below is a young buttefly bush.
It seems as though everyone in Parkman has been bitten by the daylily bug. The botanical name for daylily is Hemerocallis, which means "beauty for a day". Even though each individiual flower lasts for only one day, each plant produces many blooms during the growing season. Here are two of Ann's daylilies:
The plant between the rocks with the blue-green foliage is a tiny sedum. It's one of Ann's newest additions to her garden. There are many different kinds of sedum, including the other sedum in this picture to the right of the lower rock. That larger sedum is Sedum kamtschaticum.
A beaufiul color combination of pink and purple is on display in Ann's front yard. Here, the beautiful pink yarrow (Achillea) is accented nicely by the purple salvia or veronica. Both salvias and veronicas have similar flower spikes.
This is Ann's mystery plant. I'll try to identify it for the future. But for now, I'll just describe it as a low-growing plant with a tiny true-blue flower. You can see the flower in more detail in the second picture below.
This is Ann's new hosta garden bed. Ann divided some of her hostas and transplanted each division with care into this bed. Some of the hostas look unhappy now, but they will perk up. Dividing plants is a great way to increase the number of plants you have or to share plants with friends.
And now for the laugh of the tour. Ann has a delightful sense of humor, and doesn't mind it if the joke is on her. One of the plants in the picture above, planted with Ann's loving care, is NOT a hosta at all, but a weed. Can you spot it? If not, see the picture below. Ann said that she thought about pulling the weed out before the garden tour, but decided that we would all get a chuckle from her mistake. Although, as Marie pointed out, the weed in question is a plantain, and one of the common names for the hosta is "plantain lily" because of its resemblance to the plantain weed. So Ann's mistake was perfecty understandable!
Thank you, Ann, for your hospitality and for your wonderful sense of humor! We enjoyed seeing your plants and hearing you talk about them. Thank you!
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